Former Irish P.M. dead

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32604, 12 May 1971, Page 17

Former Irish P.M. dead

(N.Z. Frets Ann —Copgrlflhf; DUBLIN, May 11. Mr Sean Francis Lemass, the Prime Minister who led the Republican Irish from the fields into the factories, died during the night at the age of 70.

Mr Lemass succeeded Mr Eamon de Valera as Prime Minister, serving from 1957 to 1966. Like most senior politicians in the republic, Mr Lemass graduated to the debating chambers of government from the battlefield. He was still a schoolboy

when he joined the Irish Republican Army to fight the British occupation forces; and he was a member of the small garrison that held out for a week under constant British bombardment in the General Post Office in Dublin in 1916. He was captured at the end of the siege, but was released by British . officers after a week; they 'thought him merely an adventurous schoolboy. But in the next four years the adventurous schoolboy became an experienced urban guerrilla, a role about which he never talked.

When Fianna Fail came to power in 1932, Mr Lemass

emerged as right-hand man to Mr de Valera. Although the youngest Cabinet Minister in Europe at that time Mr Lemas drew the difficult task of industrialising a country, the economy of which had been solely based on farming.

Mr Lemas succeeded Mr de Valera when the Irish leadei became President and after seven years, he relinquished the Prime Ministership in favour of Mr Jack Lynch, who is still in power. Pope John XXIII conferred Mr Lemass the distinction of Knight of the Plan Order in the First Class, and the Greek

Government presented him with the Grand Cross of the Order of St Dennis of Zante

Mr Lemass is survived by his wife—a childhood sweepheart, his son, Noel, who is a junior Minister in the present Government; and a daughter, the wife of a former Minister of Finance, Mr Charles Haughey.